Expert: Chicago cops hold arrestees longer than other cities

An expert testifying at a federal trial over the death of a community activist in a police lockup said Tuesday that Chicago holds arrestees at stations for much longer than other cities, allows untrained desk officers to make crucial health decisions and fails to bring in qualified medical personnel even when there are red flags.

"You are supposed to err ... unequivocally on the side of overresponding, on the side of well-being and safety," Michael Brasfield, a retired Seattle assistant police chief and expert in police practices, told jurors.

Brasfield's testimony is at the heart of a civil case that could have far-reaching impact on how the city treats people in custody. The lawsuit by the family of May Molina alleges that police routinely deny access to medications and treatment to those held at stations.

The suit alleges that Molina's lawyer and two other inmates at the district station at Belmont and Western told officers that she needed medical help, but their warnings fell on deaf ears even as she grew increasingly wheezy and incoherent. Molina, 55, obese and suffering from asthma and diabetes, was found dead in 2004 after being held in a lockup for nearly 30 hours on a drug possession charge.

Attorneys for the city have argued Molina caused her own death by secretly swallowing packets of heroin at the time of her arrest and noted she never asked for treatment. The city also contends that the Police Department's general orders — which ban medications in lockups but require officers to take all detainees requesting treatment to a nearby hospital — are in line with jurisdictions across the country.

To bolster its claim of a broken system, Loevy & Loevy, the law firm representing the Molina family, had experts mine more than 13,000 Chicago police arrest reports from 2000 to 2004 for information about whether an arrestee had serious medical issues and, if so, whether they were taken to a hospital during their time in custody.

Brasfield, who acknowledged being paid $250 an hour by the Loevy firm for his work on the case, testified problems start with the initial screening of arrestees entering the lockups. Many reports he examined indicated the officers who filled out medical questionnaires didn't follow up on so-called red flag questions, Brasfield said.

For example, in most other cities, an arrestee who reported needing seizure medication would immediately be seen by a registered nurse or fire department paramedic, and any follow-up would be documented, Brasfield said. That often fails to happen in Chicago, he said.

"It is just a process," Brasfield said. "They ask the questions, check the boxes, and that's it."

Based on its own statistics, Chicago police on average held a woman in a police station after arrest for about 10 hours. For men it was about 11 hours, he said. Nationally, the average is about three or four hours, Brasfield testified.

In the reports he reviewed for Molina's case, about 12.5 percent of arrestees were still in a Chicago police station lockup 20 hours after they went in, Brasfield said.

During an often testy cross-examination Tuesday, Brasfield acknowledged he had only "spot checked" the arrest reports in question and based much of his opinion on the statistics derived by other experts hired by the Loevy firm.

Attorney John Gibbons, who represents the city and the officers being sued, also hammered away at Brasfield's claim that the officers in Molina's case had not performed 15-minute checkups on her the night she died, an allegation the officers have long denied. Gibbons asked Brasfield whether he had a "single shred" of hard evidence that the officers hadn't made their rounds.